Yumengang = Jade Gate in the Han dynasty Great Wall, marking point of transition between China and the Western Regions / Central Asia.. an astounding number of fire signal towers all throughout this area also.. at another gate Maquanwan nearby 12.5k Han documents excavated 1970s

Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, from today. Absolutely incredible place.

Xuanquanzhi: way-station on the Han road to western regions, near Dunhuang, excavated in 1990s and home to another *giant* new museum that just opened in August (site pictured, museum 5km to west)

Will add: talking with Bernhard Palme today, the noted Viennese papyrologist:

Perhaps 30,000 Roman-Byzantine papyri published that are maybe 10% of the total, but no one really knows. May be much more than that total. But probably 90% unpublished.

Dunhuang tomorrow: what a ridiculously rich place, and i am *so excited*

For lack of a better thing to easily share: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunhuang

Apropos to our conference topic: a bronze copy of a decree for new universal measurements by the Qin dynasty 221-206 BC.

I had the benefit of live translation from the original today (not AI) which i will not attempt to replicate.

But the comparisons are rich.

Also, no find spots indicated 🤷‍♂️

New museum for archaeology and historical collections in Shanghai: opened 2024. Not a regional museum, but a national collection like Beijing. Typological organization by floor. *Totally packed*. And also free.

Just a taste, sans comments

Had 14 hour day here, nine hours of papers.. three more days of the same here in Shanghai then on to Dunhuang

Will post some images from slides and comments later, but *holy sh%t* the scale and extent of documentation and archaeology here is absolutely wild.. newly discovered cached archives eg related to ancient logisticsl/administrative networks with *tens of thousands* of docs in a single cache

Fascinating first day in Shanghai with conference here, focused on connections and comparisons between Zhou-Qin-Han China with Achaemenid and Parthian Persia

Vending machine in my hotel has duck necks, a bag for about $2.50 USD.

🦆 I will report / quack back about 🦆

Mission of liberal arts institution should be to make knowledge of wide range of disciplines available. RS or etc can all teach "critical thinking" and attention to text. Fine. But as you say: students are *interested* and fields should be available for curiosity. But decline in lang ed is *baddd*